RoninUtah

That looks great! Did you spray the Duplicolor straight onto the styrene, or did you uses a primer? I've always been afraid that auto paint might craze the plastic, but yours looks perfect!

Very nice build! I also did one of these AITM Loadstars... I did mine as a boring all-grey box truck, but it's not nearly as nice as yours. I remember when I was in the Seabees in the early '70s we had a Loadstar with a Holmes 750 wrecker. Every time I pulled motor pool duty I'd have to fire it up about 2 AM to pull somebody out of a ditch or somewhere where they weren't supposed to be! We also had a bus, similar to a school bus, with a Loadstar front end and drive train. They were fairly reliable pieces of equipment, as I recall.

That's a beauty. Simply amazing level of detail!

+1 to what Brian said. I thought mine was pretty good, but compared to yours it looks like a toy! I see you even have the luberfiner in the right place- Dodge had to install them upside down, because there wasn't enough clearance to get the filter out from the top! One minor note: Most L1000 had a pair of air tanks on the driver's side, attached to the bottom of the battery box and slightly offset vertically. See attached pic. Great work!

Thank you all very much!

Thank you, Gary!

Thanks, Jim!

Back in 1969, when AMT came out with the first Peterbilt 359 “California Hauler” kit, I was a truck-crazed 19-year-old kid. I had been building model cars for a few years back then, so I immediately grabbed a new Pete kit and then sent away for the sleeper cab (it was separate when the kit first came out). I still have that build; I recently “restored” it by replacing missing cab accessories and mudflaps and such, and I think it still holds up pretty well for a 50-year+ year old build. (geez, I’m old!) So, when Round 2 re-released the California Hauler kit not too long ago, I thought I’d build another one, more than a half-century later. Since the AMT version is a ’67 (with the 2-bar grille) I decided to do it as a ’68-72 version with a 3-bar grille, as if it was a brand-new unit still on the lot in Newark. I cut out the grille and added nylon grille cloth and cut grill bars out of wire (I need to figure out a better way of straightening those). Otherwise, it’s a straight-up box build with only a couple of other minor mods. And yes, the engine is painted white! So, here is the brand new 1968 Peterbilt 359, by itself and together with its 54-year-old counterpart. Enjoy!

Thank you!

Thank you very much for the kind words! Yes, that’s the reason why I chose the Louisville as a donor. This one is an early N series, before Ford raised the roofline to create more headroom, I believe in 1966. Although it’s a curbside model, I used the bottom of the Cat engine that came with the Louisville. I was very pleased with the CIP conversion; it was crisply detailed, accurate and fit together nicely. They’re a little pricy, but worth it in my opinion.

Here's another one from the awesome Romanian company CIP, who came out with that '49 Freightliner Bubblenose a little while ago. It's a 1963-65 Ford N950, the snub-nosed version of the F series. They never won any beauty contests, but I remember seeing them at work back in the day and I always thought thought they were tuff looking little trucks. I put the resin cab on an AMT Ford Louisville chassis and it worked pretty well. I'm pleased with the results.

Great work, beautiful detailing!

Great looking build, great weathering. I've always loved these round-nose White 3000s- for 1/25 the Jimmy Flintstone cab isn't bad; when I built mine I used a Lindberg Dodge L700 for a donor and it fit almost perfectly.

Nice clean build, looks great!

Got it, thanks for the clarification!